GWPF Newsletter: Unsettled Science - Antarctic Isn't Warming, Models Wrong Again

In this newsletter:

1) Unsettled Science: Antarctic Isn’t Warming, Models Wrong Again
The American Interest, 30 May 2016
 
2) New Study: Global Warming May Boost Arctic Snowfall And Slow Greenland Ice Sheet Decline
Reporting Climate Science, 24 May 2016

3) Met Office: Gulf Stream Slowdown Due To Nature Not Climate Change 
Reporting Climate Science, 27 May 2016
 
4) CERN Results Strengthen Svensmark’s Cosmic Ray-Climate Theory
No Tricks Zone, 30 May 2016
 
5) Stonehenge At Risk From Bugs Bunny!
Not Many People Know That, 31 May 2016
 
6) Yorkshire ‘Has Chance To Be Centre Of European Shale Industry’
BBC News, 25 May 2016
 
7) Anti-Shale Nationalists & Socialists Drive Industry Out Of Scotland
The Courier, 30 May 2016

1) Unsettled Science: Antarctic Isn’t Warming, Models Wrong Again
The American Interest, 30 May 2016

Full details:

A group of scientists have just published a study that tries to explain why Antarctica isn’t warming as predicted, and its ice isn’t melting as climate models say it should be. As Reuters reports, the researchers identified flows of cold, deep water as the primary reason our models are failing down there:

A persistent chill in the ocean off Antarctica that defies the global warming blamed for melting Arctic ice at the other end of the planet is caused by cold waters welling up from the depths after hundreds of years, scientists said on Monday. […]

[An] upwelling of cold water helped to explain the persistence of sea ice but not its expansion, a trend other studies have linked to shifts in winds off the vast frozen continent. Monday’s report found that warm waters in the Gulf Stream cool as they flow north into the North Atlantic, then sink and loop south towards Antarctica as part of an aquatic conveyor belt that takes centuries to complete.

Eventually, gale force winds in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica blow surface waters northwards and draw the chill, ancient waters from the depths. That upwelling helps explain why the surface of the Southern Ocean have warmed by just 0.02 degree Celsius (0.036 Fahrenheit) per decade since 1950, a fraction of the global average of 0.08 degree (0.144F), the study said.

We’ve known for some time that Antarctica hasn’t been melting as fast as climate models predicted it ought to be, and scientists have been surprised to find the southern continent’s ice sheets have expanded in some places. Last fall a group of researchers issued a corrective to models that predicted that melting Antarctic ice could add a meter to global sea levels by the end of the century, calling that catastrophic future “implausible.”

Last September new research suggested that Antarctic water was capable of storing much more atmospheric carbon dioxide than previously believed—one of those rare examples of positive climate news. Now, scientists think they have a better handling on why those waters haven’t been warming as expected, and to the extent that we’re able to refine our knowledge of the way these important systems work, that’s encouraging progress.

But it should also serve as a warning to overzealous greens that point to climate models as fonts of infallible evidence for justifying their harebrained policy schemes. We can acknowledge that our climate is changing and that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a major driver behind rising surface temperatures while also pointing out that the details (wherein the proverbial devil lies) are a lot less clear. We’re constantly being surprised by observations that don’t square up with predicted outcomes, and scientists must then dutifully search for explanations. Discovering those explanations is therefore both edifying and humbling, and reminds us just how little we really know about our climate.

2) New Study: Global Warming May Boost Arctic Snowfall And Slow Greenland Ice Sheet Decline
Reporting Climate Science, 24 May 2016

Global warming may increase Arctic snowfall which could slow the shrinkage of the Greenland ice sheet. A history of Arctic snowfall is hidden in ancient leaf waxes found in lake sediments on Greenland. A surprising trove of data yields indications of increased Arctic snowfall in times of warming.
 

Global warming may boost snowfall in the Arctic, according to the results of research. Lakebed sediment cores such as this, held by researcher Elizabeth Thomas, indicate historic snowfall in Greenland has increased in times of warmer temperature. Courtesy: Douglas Levere

The history of Greenland’s snowfall is chronicled in an unlikely place: the remains of aquatic plants that died long ago, collecting at the bottom of lakes in horizontal layers that document the passing years.

Using this ancient record, scientists are attempting to reconstruct how Arctic precipitation fluctuated over the past several millennia, potentially influencing the size of the Greenland Ice Sheet as the Earth warmed and cooled.

An early study in this field finds that snowfall at one key location in western Greenland may have intensified from 6,000 to 4,000 years ago, a period when the planet’s Northern Hemisphere was warmer than it is today.

Global Warming Could Increase Arctic Snowfall
While more research needs to be done to draw conclusions about ancient precipitation patterns across Greenland, the new results are consistent with the hypothesis that global warming could drive increasing Arctic snowfall — a trend that would slow the shrinkage of the Greenland Ice Sheet and, ultimately, affect the pace at which sea levels rise.

Full story

3) Met Office: Gulf Stream Slowdown Due To Nature Not Climate Change 
Reporting Climate Science, 27 May 2016

Natural long term cycles in the ocean and not climate change are behind the well publicised slow down in the Gulf Stream that has been observed in recent years, according to new research from Met Office scientists. The observed decrease in the so called Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – of which the Gulf Stream is a part – over the past decade was preceded by a period where the circulation intensified, they report in a new paper.


From the UK Meteorological Office (Met Office)

Any substantial weakening of a major North Atlantic ocean current system would have a profound impact on the climate of north-west Europe, including the UK.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – part of which is known as the Gulf Stream – has been observed over the past 10 years, and has been seen to weaken over that time, raising the question of whether the weakening has been caused by climate change. New Met Office research published today instead suggests that the trend is likely due to variability over decades.

Laura Jackson of the Met Office Hadley Centre is the lead researcher. Commenting on the paper, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, she said: “The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation plays a vital role in our climate as it transports heat northwards in the Atlantic and keeps Europe relatively warm.”

Reanalysis captures Gulf Stream changes

The Met Office research produced a new ocean ‘reanalysis’ combining a state-of-the-art model of ocean dynamics with ocean observations from satellites, and ocean floats sampling below the surface. This has captured year-to-year variations and recent decadal trends with unprecedented accuracy.

Laura Jackson said: “Our research produced a picture of how the ocean has evolved over the last couple of decades. The reanalysis reproduces the observed decrease in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation over the past decade, but finds that this was preceded by a period where the circulation intensified. This suggests that decadal timescale variability likely played a key role in the weakening of the circulation seen over the last decade.”

Full story

See also: New Study Debunks Global Warming Ice Age Scare

4) CERN Results Strengthen Svensmark’s Cosmic Ray-Climate Theory
No Tricks Zone, 30 May 2016
Pierre Gosselin

Looking at the English-language media, one might be led to think that the latest CERN experimental results show that trees alone dominate cloud formation, by supplying the necessary cloud seeding medium. Little reference is made to cosmic rays acting as the cloud formation modulator, initiating the cloud seeding process, as hypothesized by Henrik Svensmark.

Lubos Motl at the Reference Frame noted that factions of the mainstream media seem to have spun the recent CERN papers in a “bizarre” way.

German press reports cite cosmic rays

Yet looking at the reporting by German-language scientific media, one finds plenty of mention of cosmic rays as a major player in cloud formation, which has a large cooling effect on our climate, and that erosols have been grossly misweighted in the recent climate models.

Dr. Sebastian Lüning and Professor Fritz Vahrenholt here write that the latest CERN results confirm what they claimed already in their 2012 book: The Neglected Sun. Today they write:

“Already one year ago, in April 2015, scientists warned that the cooling effect by aerosols had been exaggerated (see our blog article “Director of the Hamburg Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology: Aerosols cool less than previously assumed“). This appears to have been confirmed further. Within the scope of the CLOUD Project at CERN, scientists have found more indications that the aerosol effect in the models must corrected strongly downwards.”

Scinexx.de here writes that trees earlier “provided the means for lots of clouds before industrialization” and that “man obviously has influenced cloud formation [Industrialization] less than previously thought.”

So if it wasn’t human emitted particles seeding clouds before industry; and causing cooling like in the mid 20th, what could it have been? The answer according to CERN is “organic vapours emitted by trees that produce lots of aerosol particles in the atmosphere when there’s no sulphuric acid.”

How does the cloud seeding by organic tree particles work? Through nucleation-inducing cosmic rays.

Full post

5) Stonehenge At Risk From Bugs Bunny!
Not Many People Know That, 31 May 2016
 



http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/global-warming-impacts/world-heritage-tourism-sites-climate-change-risks#.V01lp74wJ60

As well as neolithic monuments being at risk from a non existent sea level rise, the Union of Concerned Socialists Scientists reckon that Stonehenge is at risk from warm winters and rabbits. This is despite the fact it has managed to withstand all that the weather has managed to throw at it for thousands of years, including the MWP and LIA. 
  
 

Let’s start by looking at the “warmer winters” myth, and analyse the historical temperature record at Oxford, which has quality data back to 1853, and is just an hour’s drive away.
 

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/oxforddata.txt

Certainly it is the case that last winter was the warmest on record, due to a very mild December, but the next warmest was 1869. Otherwise, there has been nothing remarkable about winter temperatures at all.

Maybe that is why the rabbit population in Britain is lower now than it was in the 1920s, according to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.
 


http://www.gwct.org.uk/research/long-term-monitoring/national-gamebag-census/mammal-bags-comprehensive-overviews/rabbit

Full post

6) Yorkshire ‘Has Chance To Be Centre Of European Shale Industry’
BBC News, 25 May 2016
David Rhodes

The first fracking operation in England since a ban was lifted in 2012 has been approved at a site close to the North York Moors National Park. Yorkshire now has the chance to be at the centre of Europe’s new fracking industry.

When any fracking application is discussed attention focuses on the environmental arguments, but what could fracking in North Yorkshire mean for the regional economy?

“Our region has the chance to be at the centre of Europe’s new fracking industry,” according to Paul Glover, the chair of Petrophysics at the University of Leeds.

“Its all about first mover advantage. Look at what happened in Scotland. When they found oil under the North Sea they had a choice to base the new industry in either Aberdeen and Dundee. Aberdeen was chosen and history shows us that it’s done very well.”

For two days the often spirited arguments that were laid out at County Hall in Northallerton centred on the potential environmental impact of the development at Kirby Misperton by Third Energy.

In contrast, business and economic opinion about the plans to frack for shale gas has been more understated.

“The issue of fracking hasn’t come up as a business issue. Our members haven’t told us if they’re excited or concerned about the process,” says Sandy Needham, the chief executive of the West and North Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce.

North Yorkshire has been at the centre of a number of recent controversial planning applications. Not only has fracking attracted protesters from across the UK but last year the North Yorkshire Moors Park Authority gave approval for a £1.7m potash mine to be built within the National Park.

The developers of both proposals have promised that the respective projects would bring substantial economic benefits to the wider area.

Full post

7) Anti-Shale Nationalists & Socialists Drive Industry Out Of Scotland
The Courier, 30 May 2016
Gareth McPherson

Scotland is to miss out on thousands of energy jobs following a petrochemical giant’s decision to move its fracking operation out of the country, says a Conservative MSP.

Ineos said its geologists and engineers are now all based in England, with the company’s fracking focus “very much south of the border now”.

The multinational firm had its heart set on recovering shale oil and gas across swathes of Central Scotland, including Fife, but the SNP’s long-running moratorium on the energy extraction technique has forced a retreat, it says.

Alexander Burnett, a Conservative MSP for the North East, said it would be “foolish” to miss out on the shale industry when the need for new energy sources is so paramount.

“Fracking would provide a boost for the economy and potentially thousands of new jobs. It now seems like this opportunity, will now sadly be lost,” he said.

“The rest of the UK is moving ahead and Scotland can’t afford to be left behind. It is time the SNP woke up to the potential of the shale gas industry.”

Full story

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.